Make Your Own World Cup: Custom Formats and Group Simulation
Publisher: Football Sim Lab · Published
Sometimes you want the familiar World Cup format with a few different countries. Sometimes you want eight groups, no continental restrictions and a final between two teams that would never meet in the real draw.
You can now do both in Free Tournament. Choose a starting format, change the teams and decide which restrictions belong in your competition. You can also slow the tournament down: play one group, look at the table, then move to the next.
This follows our draw reliability update, which dealt with blocked draws, duplicate teams and manual groups carrying into the standings. Here, the changes are about giving you more room to set up and play the tournament you had in mind.
Start with a format you recognize
Open Tournament settings, labelled Settings on a phone, beside the Free Tournament heading. Three templates give you a quick starting point:
| Field | Group stage | Knockout qualifiers |
|---|---|---|
| 24 teams | Six groups of four | Top two per group, plus four third-place teams |
| 32 teams | Eight groups of four | Top two per group |
| 48 teams | Twelve groups of four | Top two per group, plus eight third-place teams |
The templates borrow those competition structures. They aren't exact historical World Cup replays: the simulator's current scoring and tiebreak rules still apply, and you choose the countries.
For a first run, the 32-team setup is an easy one to follow. Each group sends two teams through, so there is no best-third-place calculation to wait for.
A 64-team World Cup, if that's what you want
You don't have to stop at the templates. Expand Customize rules to change the number of groups, teams per group, automatic qualifiers and extra qualifiers.
For a 64-team tournament, use:
- Number of groups: 16
- Teams per group: 4
- Automatic qualifiers per group: 2
- Extra qualifiers: 0
That gives you 64 countries in the group stage and 32 teams in the knockout bracket. Apply the format, then edit the field.
Custom competitions can contain up to 128 national teams, with two to eight teams in each group. The qualifiers must fill a knockout bracket of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64 teams. There are no byes or uneven groups. If the numbers don't work together, the settings explain the problem before you apply them.
Changing a format after drawing groups can discard those groups and their results. Check the confirmation before replacing a tournament you want to keep.
Keep the pots. Change who's in them.
Free Tournament starts with ranking pots, but you can edit them. Replace a country, move it to another pot or turn seeding off altogether.
If the destination pot is full, moving a team swaps it with the last listed team in that pot. That keeps the pot sizes balanced without making you find and remove another country first. Under Manage teams, you can also re-seed the selected countries, restore suggested teams or clear the selection.
The initial order comes from the site's bundled ranking data, not a live ranking feed. Match strength uses a separate stored rating. Moving a team into Pot 1 changes its draw position; it doesn't make that team stronger on the pitch.
Confederation limits are optional and off by default in Free Tournament. Leave them off for an all-European competition or a field built around your own favourites. Switch them on if you want groups limited to two UEFA teams and one from each other confederation.
You can also choose a host, decide whether it belongs in Group A, enable home advantage, include a third-place match and avoid same-group opponents in the first knockout round. Those choices sit inside the rule editor rather than taking up space above the teams.
Draw the groups, or arrange them yourself
Draw groups makes a draw immediately. Once you have one, Draw again gives you another. There is no separate Random groups mode to select before pressing a second button.
Use Arrange manually when you already have a particular group in mind. Your choices still have to meet the rules you've enabled, including pot restrictions when seeding is on. If you turn those restrictions off, you get more freedom to place the teams.
The 2026 replay and 2030 projection remain separate modes with their own setups. Free Tournament has its own teams and results, so experimenting here doesn't replace your progress in either one.
You can stop after Group A
Group-by-group simulation works in the 2026 replay, the 2030 projection and Free Tournament. Simulate one group and the others stay as they were. Re-simulate that group to try another outcome without rolling the whole stage again. User-entered match scores are preserved.
The completion count shows how far you've got. When you're ready to move faster, the main simulation action finishes the remaining groups. Qualifiers are settled once the full group stage is complete.
This is useful when one group is the reason you started the tournament. Play it first. Check who needs a point, enter a score of your own, or try the group again before completing the rest of the field.
Changing a group result can change the qualifiers, so it clears the old knockout results and champion. That prevents a final from surviving after its participants have been knocked out of the group stage.
In the knockout stage, the score decides
Manual knockout editing no longer asks you to enter a score and then separately choose a winner. An unequal score sends the winning team through.
For a draw, penalty fields appear. Enter both shootout scores, with one higher than the other, to decide who advances. A match with an unfinished shootout stays unfinished; running the simulation won't quietly replace your manual draw with a generated result.
The same idea applies later in the bracket. If you change the advancing team, the affected later results are cleared so you can play that branch again.
More options, less screen to scroll through
Tournament settings now has two matching fold-out sections: Customize rules and Manage teams. The working page stays focused on the countries, groups or bracket. On a phone, you can switch the visible pot, group or knockout round rather than scroll through every panel.
Your free-tournament draft stays in the current browser session. Image and print/PDF exports let you keep a result, and a public share link includes the custom format so another person can read the groups and bracket. Local progress doesn't automatically follow you to another device or domain; see the privacy and storage details.
Make your own tournament. If you need a starting idea, try 32 countries, leave seeding on and turn continental limits off. Then decide which four teams you would least like to see drawn together.